No, never. However, I bought the much-praised Renée Fleming CD set in about 1996, and somewhere-or-other have Maria Callas singing the big rondo at the end. I have another engagement on Saturday, unfortunately.

Like, Andrew, I have another engagement...otherwise I might drive all the way to Lynchburg for this one.

Tomorrow I will be attending Opera Roanoke's Lucia, which is reviewed in today's paper but apparently the review is not online...

It got high praise but the reviewer noted that only about 1/3 of the 900+ seats were occupied.

As a budget measure it is being done in concert form...and, from past experience, I know that a lot of people who will faithfully LISTEN to a radio broadcast won't go to a live opera that doesn't have scenery...go figure.

The conductor, of course, is Steven White, who got a standing ovation in his debut conducting Traviata at the Met a few weeks ago: http://www.roanoke.com/242694

What a strange opera...Armida. Everybody singing coloratura, but there was other stuff that I thought wasn't supposed to be in bel canto operas, like a chorus, and a long ballet, and orchestration that didn't sound scaled down to me. And the plot! It didn't conclude, it just stopped. The last scene was a rousing gathering of demons to accompany Armida on her search for vengeance on Rinaldo. Okay, but then what happened? Did she catch him and chop his head off? Did he escape? Were Rinaldo's fellow soldiers able to send Armida and her hellish companions back to where they came from? Is there a sequel?

You'll have to read Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, Rita! Incidentally, Goffredo in the opera was a real person - Godfrey of Bouillon (yes, really). I saw a statue of him when I was in Brussels last year.

As for the music, lots and lots of bel canto operas have choruses - certainly most of the ones I know by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and early Verdi. Ballets are more unusual, certainly. Incidentally, the fast section at the end of the ballet was re-used by Rossini three years later when he replaced Alidoro's aria in La Cenerentola (which, because of shortage of time, had been written by another composer, Agolini) with one of his own.